


antlers

by clytemnestras



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Comment Fic, F/M, Girlhood, Implied Relationships, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7294822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>When I became a woman</i><br/>in the summer of my fifteenth year,<br/>I found myself<br/>suddenly changed in the mirror.<br/>My many-pronged crown had grown<br/>into a wildness all its own;<br/>highly stylized, the bright<br/>anarchic antlers were majestic to my eye. </p><p>- <a href="https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/own_words/Ansel_Elkins/">the girl with antlers</a>, ansel elkins</p>
            </blockquote>





	antlers

**Author's Note:**

> originally written 30/9/15
> 
> i found this on my lj, assuming i'd already posted it.

She skins her knees bi-weekly. 

Her aunt (no, not her aunt, her mother? no, not that either) chastises her. There’s blood all over the kitchen. Amelia thinks it’s rather pretty that way. Twin trails drip along the woodgrain and follow her to the hall.

*

Home, alone. She isn’t sure where anybody is.

Amelia is nine. Santa ignores her prayers.

She dreams wolves. She dreams whales. She dreams setting forest fires that swallow up the world.

*

Nefertiti would kiss her, she thinks. In other worlds, Aphrodite would marry her. She knows already that in this story she is War.

*

Rory calls her pretty, in her cutoff shorts, her ripped shirts. The girls call her things she doesn’t understand as insults. She bites them anyway, unsure if she’s mad or just hungry. 

They are on the brink of something, almost - almost -

*

Sixteen. She becomes Amy. Her legs lose their imbalance, skirts stop fearing her. The dogs come for her, chasing, chasing, touching her hair and calling her baby. She runs until breathless. Turns. Stalks home.

*

Nefertiti loves her. God, she must. The book pages paint her immortally brave.

Why yes, she practises to the bathwater, to the mirror, I am a Queen.

*

The dogs, again. 

She can hear them panting, breaths hot and dripping on her neck. She twists when they come. Head bowed. Horns poised. Crown poised. 

Seeing red, they wake up blue and green and purpled. Her fists bleed, slightly. The kitchen floor shudders in nostalgia.

*

The Doctor, then. Imaginary, or something, or …

The lines of intersection are wrong. She can feel it, the wrongness in her blood. He opens the door to her, burning up a sun, burning up a forest. Her legs will never tire of running. 

“Even now, you are frightful, Amy Pond.”

Her brow arches. She adjusts her crown. “Is that meant to be insulting?”

“Oh, never. Only the beastly can be so beautiful.”


End file.
